


your mouth full of the finest red

by sodas



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-16
Updated: 2013-07-16
Packaged: 2017-12-20 08:58:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/885415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sodas/pseuds/sodas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His eyes are like a bottle. Armin hasn’t seen the bottle since losing his home to great monsters, but he remembers it clearly, remembers its colors and the whorls in its glass. He remembers its kinship to Eren’s eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your mouth full of the finest red

**Author's Note:**

> After Shiganshina, before the military.

Eren is in the sun, flaring up and haloed by a cloud of dust. His eyes are like a bottle. Armin hasn't seen the bottle since losing his home to great monsters, but he remembers it clearly, remembers its colors and the whorls in its glass. He remembers its kinship to Eren's eyes.

The bottle's place was on the leftmost edge of the wooden dining table which Armin's grandfather had built himself. It had stayed there for the entirety of Armin's childhood, though never ringed by dust: it was used often, be it for special pebbles or a few bright, limp flowers, or just to look pretty in the sunlight. When it was empty, Armin's grandfather made sure to shine it, and on dark nights when they both had heavy hearts, he'd sit on his rickety chair and blow at the rim of the bottle, making a deep, pretty noise. While he tapped his feet against the floor, Armin would hop around gingerly for him, a child's imitation of folk dancing. Then Grandfather would set the bottle back and swaddle Armin into sleep with wool and straw.

When the bottle had flowers, they were usually yellow or white, just daisies from the side of the road saved from a fate of being mowed down by carts. Since they were city flowers, their petals were never really perfect, often browning a little and with small wet imprints of natural abuse. They slouched over the rim of the bottle, and Armin could see their stems, thick and dark and blurry behind the imperfect glass. Water would slosh when he picked the bottle up to smell them. The flowers would die and Grandfather would toss them out, and then the bottle would be in the slant of the sun again, until it passed over the window for the day. Then the green glass sat dark and dormant. Armin would rub his thumbs along its rounded sides to feel its texture.

He wants to do that to Eren's jaw right now. It's starting to form, starting to get a little stronger. Armin's noticed; it's not the same jaw that Eren would tighten during fights in the alleyways of their home. And his eyes are like the bottle, hard and some sort of maybe-green, bitter and heavy like the wine it once carried. His rage makes him look glassy. Armin wants to take Eren's face in his hands and breathe into him to make a happy music. He wants Eren to calm down.

All he does, though, is cover his face with his hands and flinch harshly away when he sees the baker strike Eren in the face. "You think," he says, grinding his boot into Eren's shin, "that even if I ran some charity over here, I'd be giving handouts to rats? Act like a man and we'll talk, you little glob of snot!"

"Who's the rat!" Eren screams, beating his fists against the brick ground when he can't reach the butcher. Armin can't bring himself to peek through his fingers yet. "Ugh— You aren't some great man either! You bake rat shit into your rolls and I don't want them anyway! I wouldn't feed that to anyone!"

The fight lasts too long for Armin's comfort, but they always do. He's curled up into himself so tightly it hurts, and it makes him feel lightheaded. When he finally feels Eren's bruised hand on his shoulder, he almost topples over. "Oh," he says shakily, and looks up at Eren with damp, tired eyes. "Is it over? Are you all right?" They reach for each other in a clumsy way, each concerned for the other's delicacy— Armin because he's afraid that Eren will break a bone and become seriously ill from it, and Eren because he knows that these day's events come back to spook Armin in his sleep. He dreams about Eren's bloody face and knuckles while the three of them sleep in barrels and burlap sacks.

"It's fine," Eren says, and squeezes Armin's hand, but won't lean on him. "That asshole's long gone now anyway." He hands Armin some half-dead daisies. "Is it true these can go into a stew?" he asks, hot-breathed and sweaty from tousling with someone thrice his size. Armin shrugs, face turned down. It's hard to look at the purpling of Eren's cheeks, especially when he puckers his mouth and spits. When he does that with a split lip, it looks like a man spitting wine.

"I guess we can try. Go get Mikasa."

They all suck on flower stems for dinner that night.


End file.
